100 Year Old Wood Floors

I love the patina of old wood floors and want to save as much as I can.  But when you remove walls and old forced air heating systems, there is a lot of patch work that needs to be done to put everything back together.  And that adds some challenges!  

It was a foregone conclusion that the kitchen floor couldn't be saved.  That's true in 90% of the houses I renovate - kitchen floors are subject to so much abuse, that they rarely look good when we pull all the extra layers of flooring off of them (this kitchen had ceramic tile and linoleum over the original hardwood!).  In this house, it looks like there were some persistent water leaks that left large stains and lots of gaps between the floorboards.  So our amazing flooring team tore out the old floor and saved what was usable to patch other areas.

Primary Suite flooring will be unified with all new beech hardwood

The other problem area is the primary suite.  Since we made this room three feet wider, it would look really odd to install new wood in that section.  It could never match the original patina. So we decided to tear that floor out and use it for patching all the other areas we have throughout the house.  We can't let that precious 100 year old floor go to waste! 

But the biggest challenge turned out to be the entryway.  Turns out, this was a nightmare to tear out.  There was plywood under the tile.  It came out in big splinters and it took hours to get it all up.

The guys were not happy that I wanted to save the floor under this tile! 

The original floor had been covered with plywood and then green square tiles were installed on the plywood (those tiles are sending out a 90's vibe!!!).

Starting point - 90's flooring???

The result?  It looks pretty nice, aside from a zillion staples that will have to be removed!  And some will get stitched in to fill those areas where we removed walls.  They also need to fix the old floor heat vent.

The living room had a big 4x4 foot patch that must have been from an old floor heating vent (interestingly, this house never had central heat on the 2nd floor).  We discovered the subfloor below created a hump that the guys needed to address before they could stitch in the reclaimed flooring. 

And now that they've patched it all up, it looks great!  When they sand it, all the wonky colors will disappear and it will be uniform and beautiful!

All the gaps and holes have been stitched closed with reclaimed flooring

These floors are beech.  We've only had one other project with beech floors, so I asked the guys to sand down a section for me, so I could see what a natural finish would look like.  I love the color - but don't love the giant footprints in the middle of the test area! 

The middle bedroom was enlarged a couple of feet, which meant some patching had to be done there as well.  See how they stitched it in?  Once it's sanded and finished, you'll never be able to tell!  

All stitched in with reclaimed flooring from other rooms

Beech is not a typical flooring that is readily available.  So we had to order it and wait for it to arrive.  But when it did, we realized it was worth the wait.  It's just beautiful!

Kitchen floor in process

Look at that beautiful beech floor! 

There's quite a bit of work to do to get it sanded and a first coat of finish.  But then we can move forward with installing the kitchen and baseboards in the rest of the room.

Pin It